Ashoka: the Search for India’s Lost Emperor, Charles Allen

Ashoka was an emperor of India who, for around two thousand years, was virtually unknown. After war-like beginnings, he became a Buddhist and began to spread Buddhist values throughout his kingdom, with the hope of conquering neighbouring territories with moral force rather than military force. There’s a certain amount of idealism about this emperor and the good works he may or may not have done, but Allen’s book does show that he seems to have been dedicated to his vision.

However, this book is less about Ashoka himself and more about the search for him — the India enthusiasts, often British people coming over to run the colonies, who hunted down the references, visited the ancient sites, and began to put things together. He’s relatively sympathetic toward those endeavours, with the attitude that if Britain did no other good for India, well, we had these clever people who helped them figure out their own history. I don’t have anything to set against that (although he does often mention local experts in languages and religion), but if you’re sceptical of a colonial narrative, I would say this verges on that territory.

It is a fascinating story, though, and doubly so to me because I know so little of India in either time period. I did sometimes wish I was better at geography, so I could draw more of it together on a mental map, but alas, I couldn’t even sketch the shape of India. Ashoka’s story is definitely worth telling, and so too that of the people who reinstated his legacy, I think.

Rating: 4/5

Grave Secrets of the Dinosaurs, Phillip Manning

Finding an intact skeleton of a dinosaur is rare enough: some of the famous specimens that look complete actually aren’t, with gaps filled in by guesswork, or from other skeletons. Partial finds are much more common — but even then, compared to all the dinosaurs that ever lived, the number that survive in some form as fossils is tiny. Every find provides new clues: an impression of skin, the hint of a feather, the presence or absence of marks which tell us how dinosaurs stood or walked.

This book is about the holy grail of paleontology: mummies, i.e. remains with soft tissue preservation. They can tell us an astonishing number of things about a corpse, and they can even include preserved biological molecules that can be tested — perhaps even DNA. This book goes through the past discoveries which have fuelled hope for soft tissue preservation, and given a lot of food for research in themselves, but the main point is an almost totally preserved specimen from Dakota. It includes background into the research and the discovery, and then a few chapters on what’s happening now. Frustratingly, it went to print before the research was complete, so readers might be left wondering if the Dakota mummy was ever successfully scanned, etc, and what that might have revealed.

It’s very much a work on an evolving situation: there’s more to learn from Dakota than is contained in these pages. That’s for sure. But that could be the case for years and years to come, so I’m glad this book exists and is accessible to laypeople.

Rating: 3/5

Forensics, Val McDermid

I actually originally bought this for my sister, but then decided I was curious about it too and got myself a copy. I really haven’t enjoyed Val McDermid’s crime fiction; I found it just too violent and gritty. And I have to admit there were points reading this non-fiction book where I felt uncomfortable thinking about serial killers and arsonists and all the kinds of people McDermid discussed, and the crimes they committed. If you ever want to look at everyone around you with suspicion, a book like this is a good place to start…

Nonetheless, I found it quite an enjoyable read. With a sister who loves all things forensics (and wants to be a coroner) and a background of watching some crime shows (NCIS, mostly), I knew most of it, but I appreciated the way it was pulled together, illustrated with examples, and expanded. I imagine if you’re an absolutely diehard fan of CSI, you might find this less than revelatory, particularly as it goes into more of the minutiae and tiny details. Still, if you have a general interest without being glued to every rerun of CSI, this might just scratch that itch of curiosity. It’s very readable, and well organised too.

Rating: 4/5

SPQR, Mary Beard

There’s so much out there about the “Decline and Fall” of the Roman Empire, it’s kind of refreshing to have a book about the very origins. Most of it isn’t new to me, though the boundaries between fact and imperial fiction can be; I have a GCSE and an A Level in Classics, so I was aware of the foundation myths of Rome, the rape of the Sabine Women, the seven kings, etc. It was nice to get more context for that, to know more about the actual grounding in fact — and to learn about Rome as a Republic, before the emperors, and to what extent it was ever democratic.

And of course, instead of focusing on why the Roman Empire fell, Beard focuses here on why it became great (while never glossing over the defeats and setbacks they suffered, which people can be prone to do). It was a hugely successful empire, beginning even before it was an empire, and Beard goes into a great deal of detail on why, how, who. Sometimes the details might be overwhelming, if you’re not that interested; it’s hard for me to judge, since I am interested.

The layout of the book is perhaps not intuitive, and people will wonder why Beard stops at Caracalla, when there was still life in the Roman Empire. But really, Beard isn’t writing just about the Empire, but about the Roman people, and what Rome meant to the world. What it still means; there are things we can learn even now about getting along. (Like absorbing each others’ religious beliefs, self-governance, becoming a citizen of the wider world as well as of our own countries…) Beard chooses to examine how Rome grew, how it became an empire; she stops before the decline, at the moment when Roman citizenship spreads across the empire.

Which is not to say that Beard thinks or states that the Romans were amazing or unproblematic or anything like that. There’s plenty of examination of the downsides and the faultlines; it’s just that Beard chooses to approach it differently to the typical post-Gibbon understanding, and is more interested in why it worked for so long than how it failed in the end.

Rating: 4/5

The Skeleton Cupboard, Tanya Byron

I’m generally fascinated about anything to do with psychology, so when I grabbed this book in a sale, I was very hopeful. That quickly died on reading just the very first chapter: she refers to trans people as “boys who want to be girls” and “ladyboys”, and remarks on that stupid cliché that oh, these men are prettier than her. She’s shaky on the correct pronouns, too — which always drives me crazy: even if you don’t “believe” in the existence of trans people (what?), what’s the point in hurting someone and disrespecting their wishes?

She’s meant to be a psychologist. And okay, at that time, there’s some leeway: trans people weren’t as well-accepted and understood, and she was just beginning her career as a psychologist. But she didn’t write the book at the beginning of her career, although goodness knows the naivete sometimes makes it seem like it. She should’ve known better.

The one thing I can commend her for is that despite all appearances in the actual narrative, she does explain beforehand that the people and cases described are composites, not any one single patient she had. Yay for some vestiges of respect for her patients and their confidentiality!

Overall, I rate this avoid avoid avoid.

Rating: 1/5

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson

So I’ve always been vaguely aware of The Bloggess, mostly because of Beyoncé the Giant Metal Chicken, which is a whole series of thoughts that reminds me of living with my dad. Like, once upon a time I had a large spotted orange, red and pink hippo from Ikea that was kind of like a draft excluder and is maybe meant to be a cot bumper? And there was a slight question of who had custody when I was moving out of my second year flat at university, because she was the mascot for us. And somehow this led to my dad going on Ebay and buying another hippo, since Ikea no longer sold them.

So I had two hippos. Then one day I came home for the holidays and a new hippo had been added to my bed. “This is getting a bit much,” I said. “They needed adopting,” he said.

Somehow, it eventually got up to eleven of them, though now there are six in my bed at home and five piled up on a stack of inflatable hedgehogs. My sister has two, as well, and I think various friends of mine also own large orange and pink hippos. And let’s not even get started on the hedgehogs. Suffice it to say, my dad and Jenny Lawson should never meet, and if you want an inflatable hedgehog, we can probably hook you up, but don’t try Ebay because my dad single-handedly drove up the market price of both inflatable Ikea hedgehogs and large pink and orange spotted Ikea hippos.

Reading Lawson’s memoir is a little like reading this post, except I feel that she’s probably funnier than me and would maybe use more italics. It works better as a blog post, rather than an extended narrative, and other reviews’ descriptions of Lawson as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” are quite on the nose. Just read her blog now and then; there are fewer weird notes to editors that read like fiction, and it’s all just as funny.

Rating: 3/5

Junk DNA, Nessa Carey

I’ve read Nessa Carey’s work before, in The Epigenetics Revolution, so I had high hopes for this — especially because it involves a lot more discussion of epigenetic modification of gene expression, and because genetics in general is something that fascinates me. If this is an interest of yours, then this will definitely work for you; I didn’t feel like it repeated the basics too much, but at the same time, it was perfectly readable for anyone at a lower level. I think so, anyway; it’s hard for me to judge now, after so much reading and now study of genetics! I can definitely say that if you know the basics about genetic inheritance and the central dogma of biology, this should work for you.

It’s also very readable and enjoyable; I’ve read some books which unfortunately manage to make genetics boring, even for me, but Carey’s isn’t one of them. This is one of the books I have no doubt I’ll keep entertaining friends and families with random information from — did you know? Did you know?

Rating: 4/5